Analysis of optical wavefronts of imaging and laser systems has become increasingly important because it is the starting point for improving the quality of these systems. The availability of commercial Shack-Hartmann sensors (such as SCLA series, WavefrontSciences, http://wavefrontsciences.com) allows aberrations to be detected very accurately and classified in the form of Zernike polynomials of different orders, or alternative representations.
Higher aberrations can also be measured using other aberrometers, including those according to the Tscherning principle, according to Abbe, or the Tracey (ray-tracing) aberrometer, or systems according to the skiascope principle.
Systems that are equipped with a CCD chip for storing the relevant optical information, such as Shack-Hartmann sensors, allow data acquisition to be carried out with video image frequencies, thus enabling dynamic processes to be recorded at a sufficient rate.
There are known methods for correcting also the higher aberrations of third order and higher according to the Seidel or Zernike classification, these methods going beyond the normal spherical correction and cylindrical correction of aberrations. These methods use, for example, adaptive optics, which act in reflection as deformable mirrors, or liquid crystal optics acting in transmission. These adaptive optics are technologically complex and presently not yet fully developed in all aspects. At present, these optics achieve two-dimensional resolutions of typically several square millimeters, and are already used under laboratory conditions in closed-loop methods to influence wavefronts between the wavefront measurement and the adaptive element (see Fernández, E. J. Iglesias, I., Artal, P. “Closed Loop Adaptive Optics in the Human Eye”, Optics Letters, Vol. 26, No. 10, May 15, 2001). These systems have not been used so far besides and beyond the mere correction of aberrations to carry out real dynamic analyses while varying the most different visual conditions.
Furthermore, especially for ophthalmologic applications, methods have been shown by which wavefronts that are deformed by the optical system of the eye are corrected to an ideal value by integrally taking into account higher-order aberrations (see Optics Letters, Vol. 25 No. 4/Feb. 15, 2000, 236-238, AWACS—Asclepion Wavefront Aberration Correction Simulator—a company document for presentation at the ESCRS in Brussels, September 2000 and at the AAO in Dallas, October 2000).